Quiz: Art Movement or Random Letters?

When a group of artists come together around a common philosophy or goal, that's the beginning of a movement. ACMI, BBAJ, RISD ... did you know that last one's an art and design school, not an art movement? See how many art movements you can pick out from the strings of random letters.

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Question 1 of 30

COBRA

art movement

COBRA is an acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. The group was an association of Belgian, Danish and Dutch Expressionist artists from 1948-51.

random letters

Question 2 of 30

MPYR

art movement

random letters

No art here. This one is just a bunch of random letters. (But doesn't it look as though you could pronounce it "empire"?)

Question 3 of 30

ASCII

art movement

ASCII is loosely used to describe any text-based visual art, but it traditionally would be created with ASCII Standard and ASCII-compliant character sets of numeric code. Most ASCII art uses fixed-width fonts, such as Courier and Monaco.

random letters

Question 4 of 30

FLUXUS

art movement

If you thought of conventional art as elitist in the 1960s, Fluxus was an avant-garde art movement for you.

random letters

Question 5 of 30

BBAJ

art movement

random letters

neither

BBAJ is the acronym for the musical "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson," but it is not an art movement.

Question 6 of 30

ZURG

art movement

random letters

This one is a bunch of random letters. But Zurg is Buzz Lightyear's archnemesis in "Toy Story 2."

Question 7 of 30

MIFS

art movement

random letters

MIFS might be familiar to you if you're in the international freighting industry, but outside that circle of people, this is just a bunch of random letters.

Question 8 of 30

NABIS

art movement

The Nabis (Les Nabis) was a group of postimpressionist avant-garde artists who dabbled in mysticism and symbolism and would kick off their gatherings by reciting "sounds, colors and words have a miraculously expressive power beyond all representation and even beyond the literal meaning of the words."

random letters

Question 9 of 30

UKIYO-E

art movement

Ukiyo-e, which means pictures of the floating world, were popular woodblock prints and paintings in Japanese art in the 18th and 19th centuries.

random letters

Question 10 of 30

OPTL

art movement

random letters

No art here. This one is just a bunch of random letters.

Question 11 of 30

VNNA

art movement

random letters

VNNA may stand for the Visiting Nurse Associations of America, but it's just a bunch of random letters in the art community.

Question 12 of 30

AOI

art movement

Society for Art of Imagination (AOI) is an international artists' society. The group promotes art that falls into fantastic realism, surrealism, magic realism, visionary art, cosmic art and inspirational art.

random letters

Question 13 of 30

JAAM

art movement

random letters

JAAM isn't an art movement, but it is a literary journal, where "JAAM" stands for Just Another Art Movement.

Question 14 of 30

IKKU

art movement

random letters

IKKU is just a bunch of random letters.

Question 15 of 30

JOYN

art movement

random letters

No art here. This one is just a bunch of random letters.

Question 16 of 30

ACMI

art movement

random letters

The ACMI is related to art (it's the Art and Creative Materials Institute), but it's not an art movement.

Question 17 of 30

QPAT

art movement

random letters

No art here. This one is just a bunch of random letters.

neither

Question 18 of 30

USRK

art movement

random letters

USRK is an acronym for a Russian airport, but in the art community, it's nothing more than random letters.

Question 19 of 30

SOTS

art movement

SOTS art is short for Socialist Art. It describes the Soviet pop art postmodernist movement based on political critique of the USSR, popular in the 1970s-90s.

random letters

neither

Question 20 of 30

FAUVES

art movement

Fauvism was the first 20th-century art movement that had to do with modern art. The French avant-garde movement emphasized personal expression and made use of intensely saturated colors.

random letters

Question 21 of 30

DADA

art movement

Dada, a movement sprung from the post-World War I period, was the first major anti-art movement and precursor to surrealism.

random letters

Question 22 of 30

OUOF

art movement

random letters

No art here. This one is just a bunch of random letters.

Question 23 of 30

ERWE

art movement

random letters

ERWE is just a bunch of random letters.

Question 24 of 30

JAZA

art movement

random letters

No art here. This one is just a bunch of random letters.

Question 25 of 30

DAEDALIC

art movement

Named for the mythical Greek artist and inventor Daedalus, Daedalic art is a sculptural style that was popular during the early archaic period of ancient Greece.

random letters

Question 26 of 30

HYWA

art movement

random letters

No art here.

Question 27 of 30

GUTAI

art movement

This postwar artist collective in Japan included experimental performance and multimedia artists.

random letters

Question 28 of 30

STEAM

art movement

random letters

STEAM is the Rhode Island School of Design's initiative to add art and design to the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) agenda, but it is not an art movement.

Question 29 of 30

DE STIJL

art movement

Influenced by the ideas of dada, a group of Netherlands-based artists and architects began a movement called de stijl (Dutch for "the style"). Also called neoplasticism, this style focuses on the basic visual elements of art, such as primary colors and geometric forms.